Presentation with Simon Wood 11/25/2015

Managing your online presence

What is an online presence?

An online presence is having a voice on the internet that shares your ideas with anybody who is interested.  It is also a way to get in touch with your community and industry. Keeping up to date with important information and hearing other ideas from people with similar situations to your own. You will be able to find out about your specialist field and see what you can do to stay relevant. 

Why does having an online presence matter?

 Simon talked about employers googling the applicant before interview and even admitted to doing it himself. I was under the assumption that this was not allowed but apparently it is rather common.  

Managing your profile is just as important as keeping your CV up to date. Simon even went on to say CVs are becoming less and less relevant which sort of contradicts what our career adviser tells us. This is interesting and something I think you have to work out with personal experiences. 

Offline presence?

At first I had no idea what this meant or imagined it would be helpful. Simon himself admitted to never thinking much of an offline presence until the last 5 years. What he means by this term is going to exhibitions, meetings, socials with people in your industry. Get your name out there and gain contacts by meeting people in person. It is a lot easier give off a stronger more accurate impression in person.  This leads on to another point he made with how important profile pictures are. This allows you to present yourself online and then be recognized offline. Having a simple picture of yourself rather than a graphic or art allows you to become recognizable at events of which people may be looking out for you.

Conclusion

Simon Wood was a good talker and really sold me on what he was talking about. He also spoke about a job offer that seemed rather interesting. I have become more aware of online presence and have already made changes and tried new things as a result of this presentation.

Pitch 3 11/18/2015

Pitch 3

The 3rd pitch was about making an application for the Gulbenkian. I didn't actually know much about the Gulbenkian or there Christmas show the Snow Child and therefore didn't have much of a creative spark with brainstorming. After a bit of researching we agreed to make an application for children to create a pre and post theater experience.

I was in charge of branding the company and application. I created Logos for each using Photoshop and Illustrator. My company logo was smart and very readable as are many of the business logos I researched. With the application logo I looked up big apps on the app store and all of them were very simplistic for example Whatsapp, Messenger, QuizUp etc. For this reason I created a snow globe and inside a silhouette. This was to represent one of the features in the app which a team mate when on to explain. I also didn't tailor the logo to the Snow Child so I could talk about working with the Gulbenkian in the future.

On an individual note I was very happy with how my part went. I introduced the presentation confidently and talked about the company and the overview of the application.

What these group pitches have taught me 11/18/2015

What these group pitches have taught me

At the start of this module I was very nervous about being graded primarily on our confidence to speak in front of people. Talking to people is no problem for me but being told to talk in front of people stressed me out.

Struggles I have faced including arranging meetings with a team of people. Often people had other things arranged outside of University and therefore couldn't be present. This was frustrating and made things increasingly stressful but something you have to overcome in the real world. Another issue was the level of input each member had on the project. For example if people don't pull there weight this can be a real pain for the rest of the team but again something the rest of the team need to get past and meet deadlines.

When I did my first pitch I needed to read my notes a fair bit despite rehearsing an awful lot. I would be rehearsing whenever I had a spare moment whether I am in the gym or walking to town. I learnt for the second pitch it was a bit easier as I could have a slide to put notes on which would remind me of the topics I was talking about. For the third pitch we were not aloud notes which initially panicked me. Though I found the subject of the pitch a lot more interested which made me more invested in the pitch. I found I had a lot more to say when I was passionate about the work. This has put my mind at ease with the final pitch as the brief is far more broad and therefore can be something I care very much about.

Overall I think the progression of the pitches have been really good. It was a really steady process which allowed me to ease into being able to present without notes. I also found myself a lot more relaxed when I was standing in front of the class.

Pitch 2 Feedback 11/6/2015

Feedback

My group and I received our pitch 2 feedback nearly a week ago and overall was quite positive. As a team we had clear evidence of good research and had made a real effort with chasing information. Though we were often unsuccessful with getting what we needed, it was just as important that we had tried. Individually we are quite confident in our verbal ability and speaking to an audience. Our presentation had good structure showing pre and post war fashion trends. Next time we should try to present our pitch without notes or cue cards and our presentation should have more of an overall design as last time it was clear we had individually created our slides. For our next pitch we will be joined by a new member which we agreed to bring in as he does not currently have one.